“While fourteen thousand lethal doses [of botox] sounds like an awful number, and one imagines the toxin reconstituted from the delivery vial and deposited with great malice into a vat of dressing at a serve-yourself bar, the feat is perhaps not that cut and dried or obviously practical. [Physically], it is a vanishingly small amount, the high number of lethal doses being a theoretical number.”

Why 14,000 doses? Because it’s a big number, a militarily interesting one. And it also happens to be the theoretical amount in one research vial of botox which misuse of resulted in a number of near fatal botulism cases discussed in the Reg article.

“However, as Millard explained, the actual amount for lethality in humans is not an exact science and extremely small amounts of highly purified protein complexes, which is what botulinum toxin is, tend to be unstable when put into much larger volumes [of water]. In other words, they denature, degrade and disappear. Millard indicated the vial contained much less practical material than the stated number of theoretical lethal doses.”

- Old US patent envisions bombing lakes with poisons and carbon dioxide pellets by George Smith

The buffet line has always been a hilarious potential outlet for biological weapons, though I was under the impression that ricin was a more potent protease poison than botulism toxin - I was wrong by an order of magnitude.

In any case, kudos to Jack De Ment of our benevolent Atomic Energy Commission for coming up with an exotic idea to poison Communists.

Fifty-six years have passed - our government probably gave up trying to find new ways to kill people years ago… right?

A roughly five-story tank containing a petroleum-based flammable liquid caught fire about 5:15 p.m. at the Bayer CropScience plant, 8400 Hawthorne Road, Fire Battalion Chief Joe Vitale said.

- Chemical tank catches fire at the Kansas City Star

Those CropScience people really seem to have a problem containing their flammables…

Originally spotted at Video: Air Force’s Killer Bugbots Attack at Wired.com.

The heat in Max Butler’s safe house was nearly unbearable. It was the equipment’s fault. Butler had crammed several servers and laptops into the studio apartment high above San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood, and the mass of processors and displays produced a swelter that pulsed through the room. Butler brought in some fans, but they didn’t provide much relief. The electric bill was so high that the apartment manager suspected Butler of operating a hydroponic dope farm.

But if Butler was going to control the online underworld, he was going to have to take the heat. For nearly two decades, he had honed his skills as a hacker. He had swiped free calls from local telephone companies and sneaked onto the machines of the US Air Force. Now, in August 2006, he was about to pull off his most audacious gambit yet, taking over the online black markets where cybercriminals bought and sold everything from stolen identities to counterfeiting equipment. Together, these sites accounted for millions of dollars in commerce every year, and Butler had a plan to take control of it all.

- One Hacker’s Audacious Plan to Rule the Black Market in Stolen Credit Cards by Kevin Poulsen at Wired.com

War Games may have kicked things off optimistically enough for the cybercrime genre, but the reality of cybercrime is far grittier and throws longer shadows than anything film noir ever imagined… if you would prefer not to await the movie incarnation, check out some recent events.

Despite the rise of DNA fingerprinting and other “CSI”-style crime-fighting wizardry, more and more people in this country are getting away with murder. FBI figures reviewed by The Associated Press show that the homicide clearance rate, as detectives call it, dropped from 91 percent in 1963 - the first year records were kept in the manner they are now - to 61 percent in 2007.

- AP IMPACT: More are getting away with murder

Not the best odds for justice.

… an interesting find. Apparently the people over at the Federation of American Scientists decided to throw discretion to the wind and post a copy for anyone who is interested.

You will notice that there are some things - corruption, in particular - which will always be referred to as “isolated” in their incidence. This is for your protection. The powers that be have determined that you would take issue (and your head would explode) if you realized what kind of people were running the show.

Another isolated incident.

Here are the election results since 1980:

Compare - year after year, it looks as though “landslides” in either direction abound.

So why are we still facing the same problems we saw in the 1980’s?

Ask not what your country has done to you…

Higher income folks receive more of their income from sources that are easier to hide, including self-employment earnings; income from rents, partnerships and S corporations; and capital gains.

In its 2001 tax gap study, the IRS estimated that individuals underreported business income by 43% overall. Sole proprietors, who report self-employment income on schedule C of their tax returns, underreported their income a stunning 57%.

By contrast, the IRS found, 99% of all wages were reported by individual tax filers. The obvious explanation is that workers have no choice–their employers report their earnings to the IRS and withhold taxes on them.

- Rich Cheat More On Taxes, New Study Shows by Janet Novack
article at Forbes.com

Who would have thought that rich people would lie, cheat, and steal from their own government? It’s a good thing that commoners are not afforded such a luxury…

A new drug from China appears to be effective in getting rid of a number of intestinal worms, a problem that plagues more than a billion people around the world.

Worms cause anemia, weight loss among infants and malnutrition, and they can retard mental and physical growth. As a result, they can exact a huge economic burden on affected communities.

Making matters worse, over time these parasites have become increasingly resistant to the handful of available drugs, posing an urgent need to find new medicines to fight them.

- China tests new drug to fight intestinal worms
article at Yahoo News

What’s this about new drug-resistant parasites?